Arabs, name originally applied to the Semitic peoples of the Arabian peninsula; now used also for populations of countries whose primary language is Arabic, e.g., Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, and Yemen. Socially, Arabs are divided into the settled fellahin (villagers) and the nomadic Bedouin.

The invasions of Muslims from Arabia in the 6th and 7th cent. diffused the Arabic language and Islam, the Arabic religion. At its peak the Arab empire extended from the Atlantic Ocean across North Africa and the Middle East to central Asia. A great Arab civilization emerged in which education, literature, philosophy, medicine, mathematics, and science were highly developed. The waves of Arab conquest across the East and into Europe widened the scope of their civilization and contributed greatly to world development. In Europe the Arab conquests were particularly important in Sicily, from the 9th to late 11th cent., and in Spain, in the civilization of the Moors. Christian scholars in those two lands gained much from Islamic knowledge, and scholasticism and the beginnings of modern Western science were derived in part from the Arabs. The Arabs also introduced Europe to the Greek philosophers, whose writings they had already translated into Arabic.

The emergence of the Seljuk Turks in the 11th cent. and of the Ottoman Turks in the 13th cent. ended the specifically Arab dominance in Islam, though Muslim culture still remained on the old Arab foundations.

In the 20th cent., Arab leaders have attempted to unite the Arab-speaking world into an Arab nation. Since 1945 most Arab countries have joined the Arab League; its purpose being to consider matters of common interest. The original charter members were Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan (now Jordan), Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was granted full membership in 1976. Other current members include Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea (pending in 1999), Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates.

With 22 member states in the Arab League by the mid-1990s, attempts to forge a unity among the Arabs have continued. Perhaps the most significant economic factor for the Arabs has been the discovery and development of the petroleum industry; two thirds of the world's oil reserves are thought to be in the Middle East. The Arab Common Market was established in 1965 and is open to all Arab League members. The common market agreement provides for the eventual abolition of customs duties on natural resources and agricultural products, free movement of capital and labor among member countries, and coordination of economic development.

Since 1948 a continual problem for the Arab states has been their relations with the Jewish state of Israel, created out of former Arab territory; hostility between them has resulted in four Arab-Israeli wars. In 2002 the league for the first time offered Israel normal relations with Arab countries if it met certain conditions, but many of those conditions were not acceptable to Israel. For many years, closer political unity among members was hampered by a division between pro-Western member countries and neutralist or pro-Soviet ones; more recently the division has been between militant Islamic fundamentalists and Arab moderates. The league ultimately supported Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) but was divided over the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. In 1993 the league issued a statement condemning all forms of terrorism.

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Middle East, term applied to a region that includes SW Asia and part of NE Africa, lying W of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. Thus defined it includes Cyprus, the Asian part of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, the countries of the Arabian peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait), and Egypt and Libya. The area was viewed as midway between Europe and East Asia (traditionally called the Far East). The term Middle East is also sometimes used in a cultural sense for that part of the world predominantly Islamic in culture, in which case Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the remaining countries of North Africa are included.

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Maghreb or Magrib, Arabic term for NW Africa. It is generally applied to all of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, but more specifically it pertains only to the area of the three countries that lies between the Atlas Mts. and the Mediterranean Sea. Isolated from the rest of the continent by the Atlas Mts. and the Sahara, the Maghreb is more closely related in terms of climate, landforms, population, economy, and history to N Mediterranean areas than to the rest of Africa. The Arab Maghreb Union was established in 1989 and includes Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. Envisioned initially by Muammar al-Qaddafi as an Arab superstate, it is eventually expected to function as a N African common market, although economic and political unrest, especially in Algeria, have hindered progress on the union’s joint goals.

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Levant collective name for the countries of the eastern shore of the Mediterranean from Egypt to, and including, Turkey. The divisions of the French mandate over Syria and Lebanon were called the Levant States, and the term is still sometimes applied to those two nations.

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